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Hugh McLennan (21 Jan. 1887-26 Apr. 1915) was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the third child of John Stewart McLennan and Louise Bradley McLennan. Hugh McLennan earned a degree in architecture at McGill University between 1905 and 1907 and also studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris before enlisting for service in World War I in 1914. He served as sergeant in the 5th Battery, 2nd Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery and was killed in action near Ypres, Belgium, on 26 April 1915. He is buried in Ypres Town Cemetery. In 1928 the Hugh McLennan Memorial Travelling Scholarship in Architecture at McGill University was established in his memory.

William Durie McLennan (24 Nov. 1889-20 May 1939) was born in Montreal, the third child of William McLennan and Marion Paterson. Durie McLennan attended McGill University, obtaining his Bachelor of Architecture in 1914. That same year, he enlisted for service in World War I and served in France in the 5th Battery, 2nd Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. He eventually obtained the rank of lieutenant. On 21 February 1923, McLennan married Gyneth Maud Wanklyn, daughter of Frederic Lumb Wanklyn and Edith Margaret Angus of Montreal. Together they had two children, Hugh and Elizabeth Wanklyn. McLennan worked as an architect before his death in 1939 from a coronary occlusion due to his earlier military service (he was gassed in April 1915) and possibly as a result of Marfan syndrome. He is buried in Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal.

William McLennan (8 May 1856-28 Jul. 1904) was born in Montreal, the fourth child of Hugh McLennan and Isabella Stewart. McLennan attended the High School of Montreal and graduated with a Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill College in 1880. After being commissioned a notary on 7 October 1881, McLennan established a partnership with Albert Clarence Lyman in 1882 and a later partnership with William de Montmollin Marler and Ernest Henry Stuart in a firm to be known as Stuart, Marler, and McLennan. He was subsequently associated with four other notarial partnerships, involving Marler, Henry Fry, John Fair, and John Alexander Cameron, until 1900 when he retired from the notarial profession. For many years he held the official position of notary to the Bank of Montreal.
In addition to his notarial career, McLennan was a successful author and translator, producing poems, short stories, novels, and other works, many of which reflect his interest in history and scholarly antiquarianism. Over the course of nearly twenty years, dozens of poems, stories, sketches, and abridged versions of McLennan’s two novels were published in Canadian and American newspapers and magazines, including “Dominion Illustrated Monthly,” the “Arcadia” of Montreal, the “Week,” the “Canadian Magazine,” and the “Globe” of Toronto, and “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” and “Harper’s Weekly” of New York. McLennan’s first major published work was “Songs of Old Canada” (1886), a collection of fourteen French Canadian folk-songs with his English translations, many of which were first published in the Montreal “Gazette” in 1885.
Other of McLennan’s works with a strong basis in historical research include “Montreal and Some of the Makers Thereof” (1893); “An Outline of the History of Engraving” ([1881]); “Anciens Montréalais, I: Bénigne Basset, Notaire Royal, 1639–1699” in “Le Canada Français” (1890); “A Gentleman of the Royal Guard, Daniel de Gresollon, Sieur Du L’Hut” in “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” (1893); “Spanish John” (1898); “The Death of Dulhut,” in “Royal Society of Canada Transactions and Proceedings” (1903); and in collaboration with Jean N. (J. N.) McIlwraith, “The Span o’ Life” (1899), a Canadian historical romance. After an abridged version of the novel “Spanish John” was published in “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” in October 1897, author Thomas Guthrie Marquis charged McLennan with plagiarism, a charge that was refuted by McLennan’s meticulous explanation of the circumstances involved in the creation of the work and by the defense mounted by contemporaries including Edward William Thomson and William Henry Drummond.
Beginning in 1891, the publication in “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine” of a series of seven stories about French Canadian life established McLennan’s reputation as a master of French Canadian dialect in English. 1n 1899, nineteen of these stories were published in a collection titled “In Old France and New.”
McLennan was heavily active in the social and cultural life of Montreal in the 1880s and 1890s. He served on the governing council of the Fraser Institute and was president from 1898-1902. He was a trustee of the Tiffin Library and was an active member of the Art Association of Montreal, the Shakespeare Club, the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, and the Pen and Pencil Club. McLennan was appointed librarian to McGill University in 1878, but he was obliged to retire due to ill health. He was named honorary librarian of McGill from 1882-1883. He later served on McGill’s corporation as representative of law. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1899. He attended the American Presbyterian Church.
McLennan married Marion Paterson, the daughter of Pemberton Paterson of Quebec, on 7 June 1883. Together they had three children, Alice Paterson (Patty), Elizabeth Paterson (Betty), and William Durie Paterson (Durie). Suffering from ill health, including asthma, McLennan moved to Europe after retiring from the notarial profession and traveled widely in Spain, France, and Germany until his death in Fiesole, Italy in 1904. He is buried in the English cemetery in Florence.

Sir Richard Owen was an English biologist, comparative anatomist, and paleontologist. He was born on July 20, 1804 in Lancaster, England. He was noted both for his study of dinosaur fossils and his strong opposition to the views of Charles Darwin. He died December 18, 1892 in London, England.

James Prescott Joule was born on December 24, 1818 in Salford, England. He was a physicist who established that the various forms of energy – mechanical, electrical, and heat – are basically the same and can be changed, one into another. Thus he formed the basis of the law of conservation of energy and the first law of thermodynamics. He died on October 11, 1889 in Sale, England.

Sir Frederick Grant Banting was born in Alliston, Ontario, Canada on November 14, 1891. He was a physician who with Charles H. Best was one of the first to extract the hormone insulin from the pancreas. Injections of insulin proved to be the first effective treatment for diabetes. Banting was awarded a share of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his achievement. He died on February 21, 1941 in Newfoundland.

Rev. Charles Sydney McGaffin, was the rector of St. Mary's Anglican in Kerrisdale, Vancouver, from 1919-1935.